... advice, and continuous support. I am also very grateful to Prof. Dr. Arthur Jacobs for his
support and for accepting to be the second reviewer of this thesis. I also thank Prof. Dr.
Winfried Menninghaus, Dr. Martin Rohrmeier, and Philipp Engel for their help and advice in
the context of the “Aesthet ...

... I am collaborating with several investigators at UCSD and other institutions to study the neural
basis of psychiatric disorders. Specifically, I am working with Drs. Susan Tapert and Gerhard Schulteis on
NIDA supported P-20 Center Grant to examine the role of interoception for drug addiction.
Intero ...

... of simulating saccadic sensory to motor transformations. This model was designed to
predict how the spatial interactions between neural signals related to visual processing
and saccadic preparation interact within the SC to influence saccadic reaction time. I
concluded that saccade latency was stron ...

... another, nearby location. If the two events occur within
20 msec or so of one another, will they appear as a single
event, namely, two stimuli occurring simultaneously at
two locations? The answer is no—one readily experiences compelling apparent motion, with a unitary stimulus seen to move from the ...

... reﬂex (Chapter 9). Such methods are especially useful for stiﬀ stochastic
problems, such as the Hodgkin–Huxley or FitzHugh–Nagumo equations
with stochastic forcing, where one usually uses an adaptive method in the
noiseless case, but is conﬁned to a ﬁxed step method with noise. Stochastic
simulation ...

... demonstrated between error detection processes and error evaluation processes and with
the apparent inhibition or uncoupling of the latter, both of which are processes emanating
from the anterior cingulate. These processes were measured with event-related potentials
(ERPs) in a Stroop-like conflict ...

... suggest an important role of the cerebellum. However, nearly all these studies are
based on the analysis of apriori selected regions of interest (known as ROI
approaches). Recent studies, using more global approaches, found that ADHD
structural abnormalities were not limited to fronto-striatal-cereb ...

... in the CVLM. These neurons may also display different neuronal firing patterns. Our study also
showed that the inhibitory effect of propofol on different neurons in the CVLM was not homogeneous,
with some potent inhibitions and some mild inhibitions detected. We also found that some neurons
were ins ...

... meet criteria for the disorder during their teenage years.
Volumetric studies in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) have consistently found global reductions of total brain volume with frontalstriatal regions, cerebellum and parieto-temporal regions particularly affected r ...

... D Abstract- This theoretical paper describes the
"intrinsic mechanism hypothesis," a new hypothesis
of vestibular compensation, the behavioral recovery
that follows unilateral deafferentation of the vestibular labyrinth (UVD). The most salient characteristic of vestibular compensation is the decreas ...

... The development of non-invasive methods of functional imaging has led to a
better understanding of the neural processes that occur in humans while they are forming
or using a memory. However, these advancements led to studies that have primarily
focused on the neural activity evoked by stimuli prese ...

... (“mosaic”) made up of discrete place-defined macrocolumns – “segregates”– in the
region of cat and monkey somatosensory cortex which receives input from forelimb skin,
also proposed that discrete place-defined macrocolumns are a common mode of
topographic organization throughout somatosensory cortex ...

... reward availability on each trial was not directly instructed; the information of reward availability could
be obtained by combining CUE-dir information with
RWD-dir information on each trial. When CUE-dir
and RWD-dir were both in the same direction A (denoted as RWDA–CUEA), or both in the same dire ...

... first three volumes were discarded to account for magnetic
field stabilization. The spatial resolution of the functional
and structural images was similar to published studies
examining resting-state connectivity of amygdala complexes
(Etkin et al, 2009; Roy et al, 2009; Roy et al, 2013).
Participan ...

... processed in close vicinity at AC. The tonotopy set limits to the frequency resolution,
but under selective attention the frequency-based segregation succeeds even in conditions where the signal and noise are overlapping in frequency. The aim of the study
was to explore these underlying short-term n ...

... setting the stage for the development of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Or there may be additional factors, such as stress or
neurotoxicity, that occur during adolescence or early adulthood and are necessary for the development of schizophrenia, and may be
associated with neurodegenerative changes. ...

... The paradox of the SEF – that it seems so saccade
related but is so blatantly unnecessary for generating
saccades – and the early findings on multiple coordinate systems in the SEF inspired a new generation of
experiments that have been very informative. This
nascent research posits a higher level f ...

... the subject must identify the stimulus that has been
paired with the cue (e.g., an umbrella). To perform correctly the subject must access their knowledge of the
stimulus pairing at some time between when the cue
is presented and the choice is made.
Using the PA task, previous studies have shown tha ...

... width showed no such clustering. By investigating the temporal patterns of neighbouring neurons in response to movies, visual noise and gratings, we found that stimulus-dependent responses, called “signals”, showed only small correlations (magnitude) on short time scales (10200 ms). The strengths of ...

... Figure 2. Entrainment of circadian rhythms: the Phase Response Curve
Much has been learned about the synchronization of the biological clock to the environmental light-dark
cycle by placing animals in constant darkness and measuring the effect of brief light pulses on the timing
of their behavior. H ...

... Slow wave sleep predominates in the first third of the night and is linked to the initiation of sleep.
REM sleep predominates in the last 3rd of the night.
Wakefulness in sleep usually accounts for less than 5% of the night.
N1 generally constitutes 2 to 5% of sleep.
N2 generally constitutes 45 to 5 ...

... 1981) and complies with the intuitive concept of learning,
according to which behavior changes as long as some
outcome is different than predicted, whereas behavior
does not change when all outcomes occur exactly as
predicted.
The empirical evidence for the role of prediction errors
in learning is b ...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) is a functional neuroimaging procedure using MRI technology that measures brain activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.The primary form of fMRI uses the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) contrast, discovered by Seiji Ogawa. This is a type of specialized brain and body scan used to map neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals by imaging the change in blood flow (hemodynamic response) related to energy use by brain cells. Since the early 1990s, fMRI has come to dominate brain mapping research because it does not require people to undergo shots, surgery, or to ingest substances, or be exposed to radiation, etc. Other methods of obtaining contrast are arterial spin labeling and diffusion MRI.The procedure is similar to MRI but uses the change in magnetization between oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood as its basic measure. This measure is frequently corrupted by noise from various sources and hence statistical procedures are used to extract the underlying signal. The resulting brain activation can be presented graphically by color-coding the strength of activation across the brain or the specific region studied. The technique can localize activity to within millimeters but, using standard techniques, no better than within a window of a few seconds.fMRI is used both in the research world, and to a lesser extent, in the clinical world. It can also be combined and complemented with other measures of brain physiology such as EEG and NIRS. Newer methods which improve both spatial and time resolution are being researched, and these largely use biomarkers other than the BOLD signal. Some companies have developed commercial products such as lie detectors based on fMRI techniques, but the research is not believed to be ripe enough for widespread commercialization.